Stop asking me ‘what about men?’

Everyone who follows my blog knows that my best work is written in rage, or port. But Christmas has gone now so no more port.
Well, at least I still have rage. So back to that.

Recently I have been getting increasingly frustrated with ‘whataboutery’ every single time I write or speak about women or girls.
For those of you who don’t know what that word means, ‘whataboutery’ is when someone responds to a difficult issue or question with a counter issue or question that completely derails the conversation.

Example:
Mai: My research focussed on the murder of women in Yemen
Randomer: uh, this is a bit sexist. What about the murder of men in Yemen? Don’t you care about men?

Example 2:
Pam: I’m really upset with you for stealing from my purse
Mel: What about that time you stole from the local shop? You’re not innocent either, you know!
Pam: I was 9.
(Haha)

Familiar with that? Yep? Thought you might be. Sometimes reminds me of gaslighting.
Okay, so back to the rage. Rage that I need to put in context for this blog to make a jot of sense.

Almost 5 years ago, my father in law died after we had tried everything to help him and begged every agency and service for help. We got the dreaded phone call from police to say they had found a body. It was his. We had to go and identify him. He was a very vulnerable adult struggling with addiction, homelessness and a very complicated trauma history.

At his wake, my Husband and I decided to set up a charity for male mental health and well-being and we named it ‘The Eaton Foundation’ (TEF).

(Someone once laughed at me, ‘Bit narcissistic of you isn’t it, naming a foundation after yourself?’ and then went every shade of red whilst I told them it was my late Father in Law’s name.)

So in 2013 we founded the charity, of which I am still the Chairperson. The charity only supports adult men. We grew exponentially. I mean – from like 10 men to 150 men in one year. In the second year of operation I managed to secure over £270k of funding and funded the renovation of a huge old derelict building which we turned into the first male mental health and well-being centre in the UK.

My husband runs it on the day-to-day, along with his staff and volunteers. We now employ 6 people and have a further 9 volunteers. We see hundreds of men a year who benefit from completely free, lifelong support including counselling, benefits advice, food parcels, housing advocacy, legal advice, IT suite, music and band practice, employment clubs and training courses, fitness clubs, art therapy and so on. Some guys have been coming every day for years. Our clientele is between 18 and 85 years old from every walk of life you can imagine.

Why am I telling you this?

Because in those 5 years, I have NEVER received the amount of abuse and ‘whataboutery’ that I get for my work and research with women and girls.
Most of you know me for my work with women and girls and my controversial tumble into CSE. My PhD focusses on the victim blaming of women and girls in society which includes one of the largest ever literature reviews of every factor in society that supports victim blaming of women and girls (I do mean every factor I could find evidence for – from porn to Hinduism).

I have a career history in rape centre management and criminal justice management of vulnerable and intimidated witness programmes, which is where I built my experience and knowledge of sexual violence, homicides, trafficking and other serious crimes across my courts.

I launched a study last year, exploring the many different forms of victim blaming women and girls can experience. Over 700 people responded. My other recent studies have included interviewing women who have been blamed for rape and abuse, interviewing therapists and support workers who work with women who blame themselves for being abused or attacked and a complex study in which I developed and validated a new psychometric measure of victim blaming of women.
I honestly cannot express how much whataboutery I get.

Here are some real examples:

‘Don’t you think you’re being sexist by only writing about women in this article?’

‘This article is good but where are your studies on men?’

‘I don’t condone murder but don’t you think you are gender biased, only caring about the murders of women?’

‘You can tell the psychologist who wrote this study is a sexist bitch who hates men’

‘This study was ridiculous. All you care about is women! What about men?’

‘You should have your PhD removed. This is so sexist. None of your research is about men.’

‘By only caring about women, you basically say that all men are rapists.’

‘This is great Jessica! But I wonder if you can now build one of these for boys and men and why they aren’t included in the first place?’

‘Why do you only focus on women? Men can get abused as well, you know!’

‘What about men, cunt?’

Honestly, I could go on forever and ever.

In fact, I did one study where there was a free text question at the end and a whopping 9% of respondents chose to use that box to criticise me for not researching men. I say whopping because the free text box didn’t even ask them a question about that and 63 people still managed to use the box to whack in some ‘whataboutery’.
Not only that but a further 14% (over 90 people) left comments that were just plain nasty or abusive. One guy told me that my work was shit and he hopes I fail my PhD. And then left his full name and job title. He was an academic at a university. In my field. He even put some kisses on.
And what perplexes me about all of this, is that I have no such experiences of running TEF.

I can’t tell you about the hundreds of messages or tweets we get asking ‘what about women?’ – because it’s never happened.

I don’t have any stories about the times we got sent a tonne of abuse when we conducted research with general public in the community about male mental health stigma – because it’s never happened.
I can switch over to the TEF twitter account right now and write literally anything about men and nothing bad will ever happen. Our Facebook page has thousands of followers and we never get threats, abuse or whataboutery.

Fair enough, my Twitter is currently at about 4.5k followers but my teeny tiny Facebook page is only on a few hundred followers and I get between 10-20 abusive messages and comments a week – almost exclusively comments about me focusing on women and girls – which usually results in me being called a ‘fat, ugly feminist cunt’ or something along those eloquent lines.

Recently this has all caused me to reflect.

Why don’t I get any abuse when I speak and write about men and boys?
Why am I hailed?

Why did we win 6 charity awards and over £300k in the first 18 months of operation?

Why did I end up on every TV channel and radio in the UK? Why can I launch studies and campaigns and videos and appeals for TEF about male mental health and receive ZERO whataboutery comments?

And why do I get shouted down if I even dare post one tweet about violence against women or rape statistics or murders of women by partners?

Why do I get hundreds of messages and tweets every week asking me:
‘But what about men?’

And actually, this isn’t rocket science. This is uncomfortable but it’s real talk:

Women are socialised into their gender roles (gender roles are harmful, narrow, stereotypical characteristics and expectations assigned to males and females to conform to a societal norm) to not even possess a shred of the sense of entitlement that men have. Women do not read a campaign about male mental health or male abuse or male cancers and furiously tweet back ‘what about women, you cunt?!’ because they didn’t think about themselves when they read it. They didn’t see the campaign as two fingers up to women.

Perfect example: Movember.

Have you EVER in your life seen women kicking off that Movember is sexist? Or that the campaign should include women? Or that focusing on testicular cancer is exclusionary? No. Have you fuck.

Second perfect example: Male suicide rates.

We know that the leading cause of death in young men aged 18-35 is suicide. This is the strongest symptom of a patriarchal society where emotionless males struggle to cope with trauma and feelings, can’t open up, don’t feel safe to talk and become completely overwhelmed by emotions they are taught are ‘feminine’, which further induces shame and stigma.
In all my years I have never seen women jump on those campaigns yelling ‘women commit suicide too, you know!!’ Or ‘what about women?’

There is ALWAYS someone saying ‘what about men though?’ under all of those issues. It’s as sure as taxes and death.

Like a depressing new catchphrase nobody wants:

‘There’s only three things you can be certain of in life: taxes, death and some randomer yelling ‘what about men?’ every time you talk about women’s issues.’

‘Whataboutery’ comes from a place of misogyny. An arrogant, derailing technique used to respond to a campaign, video, research study, intervention, organisation or communication that screams ‘I don’t care about women, talk about men!!’
And the proof is in the pudding for me. Because when I do all those things with a focus on boys and men, I’m a fucking hero. But when I do all of those things and focus on girls and women, I’m a fat, ugly feminist cunt.

So I need to explain something else. This is not about equality. ‘Whataboutery’ has nothing to do with equality. It’s not about reminding us that men suffer too. Social issues aren’t equal.

When I write a tweet about women being murdered or raped, I didn’t forget men. I didn’t forget they could be murdered or raped. I didn’t accidentally miss them off my tweet. I simply CHOSE to talk about the experiences of females. It is not helpful, or clever, or promoting ‘equality’ to write to a researcher specialising in women’s studies and tell her in three paragraphs why she should focus on men.

It is not useful to ‘send a gentle reminder than men can get raped too, you know’.
If you’re reading this and you know you have done this to someone, please think twice before doing it again. It’s not helpful. It’s derailing.
We do not need to centre men in every conversation we have. Women and girls are valid entities, independent from men.
We need to get to a point where we can talk about women’s issues and get the same level of respect we get when we talk about men’s issues.
Until then, your ‘Whataboutery’ is unwelcome here.

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Published by jessicapsych

Psychologist specialising in victim blaming and self blame following sexual violence. International independent specialist researcher and writer for www.victimfocus.org.uk - Founder of VictimFocus, The VictimFocus Charter and VictimFocus Academy. Founder and Chair of The Eaton Foundation, the first male mental health centre in the UK.
Known to some as 'that woman with the fringe who talks about victim blaming and feminism all the damn time'.
View all posts by jessicapsych

1,004 thoughts on “Stop asking me ‘what about men?’ ”

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Wow this space is intense!
I don’t see much debate though, just a bunch of people trying to prove another bunch of people wrong. 🧐
I don’t see this type of writing as anti-men… More pro-women and the struggles women deal with? If someone wants a “what about men approach”, research and write about it? Maybe take out the emotion?
We react to something the only way we know how – with our own narrative – our own experience…. and that creates this extreme emotion… us against them. It’s not that at all. What I do know is that there’s a lot of people with a lot of pain in this world and it’s clearly showing here. Change the narrative to an empathetic one – I think we are halfway there then….

You mention “ emotion” in the written word and wish it removed to create “ empathy” ? Then you use “ emotion” as you understand it to excuse the “ what about men” because “ men are just looking for balance?
Emotion directed at women is a blade to cut a so called “ weakness” -goes back to the ol hysteria when a woman became determined … persistent … bitchcraft! I am an artist of a profession that would not even acknowledge most women ( forget about welcoming) for hundreds of years-I have learned the difference in “ fair” Fair will never suit everyone -Also a teacher, I teach with differentiation. Not equal and everyone gets the “ same” -more equity -the difference between equality and equity is …well you decide .
My main “ flare” arose when you want a vanilla based blog written without emotion – In a topic that may touch nerves… but from that we grow.

I don’t see that emotion necessarily has to relate to the question of why, regardless of how they feel about it, men seem to believe men are being left out of something in an important way. The reasons for which emotion nonetheless appears to bear heavily on this question are A) that the author attributes emotional states to men which she appears to try to use as an excuse to dismiss the question and B) the author describes her own emotional response to the question as if it were more important than providing any real answer to the question. That is, the author paints a picture for readers in which the possibility that a problem exists is a possibility that is implicitly fair to dismiss apparently on the mere basis that the author’s feelings about it are more important than men’s feelings about it, as if feelings, themselves, were somehow the core issue at hand.

I haven’t read Eaton’s academic work, but including control groups of non-women in studies of phenomena which can affect all humans (e.g. victim blaming) would be absolutely standard and might well be interesting. For all I know, she has done that but not mentioned it in the piece.

Great article my wife showed me this. I am guilty of this to some level at times. It for me definitely comes from a position of blame and responsibility. As men are statistically the perpetrators of most of the inequality against women, when it’s spoken about I obviously fall into the category of male and my automatic unconscious response is of defence even though no one has directly pointed the finger at me. Definitely something I want to work on personally. Thought you may be interested in that perspective. Thanks 🙏

I’m curious about something. You don’t say what gender (or is it sex) is mostly responsible for whataboutery. I assume it’s mostly men. I’ve probably even done it a few times just to “knock that uppity bitch down a few pegs.” Do women engage in whataboutery too?

Haha well I’ve been doing this for 11 years and the majority of all of those thousands of comments have been from men.
In my PhD, as detailed in this blog, it was mostly men who left whataboutery and abuse comments on my study.
If you would like something more empirical than that, maybe you should conduct a study.

This is the beat article I have ever read about the ‘gaslighting’ of women’s issues and, as so eloquently phrased ‘whataboutery’ . Thank you for writing this and I look forward to reading more of your work, brilliant!

Not quite. Gaslighting would be something more like constructing a supposed statistical special victim group which includes only a demogrpahic segment at lesser risks than the excluded segment; then characterizing the excluded segment as pathologic for their critique of the construct whenever they happen to offer a critique of the construct.

I wish I could say that WHAT ABOUT MEN? does not affect my field of humanized birthing. Men cant give birth. But, actually men dressed up as OBGYNs and Pediatricians have figured out how to totally weasle their way into controlling womens fertility, gestation, birthing and breastfeeding through planting fear and distrust in women´s minds from day one, manipulating their vulnerability and knowing how to exert their authority, even when they seem caring and empathetic. My specialty is preparing men for childbirth. I believe they have rights and worth beyond what they can do as a support person for their partner. But ultimately, her wellbeing will be greatly enhanced by a loving Protector of the Nest, and my motivation for helping men, may be my feminist soul disguised as fairness, when its actually the only way I have to make it better for her.

Thank you so much for this. Some very interesting points. I use twitter and have read many prejudice comments, to say the least, often tangential and of a different subject. Your experience is not mine and so enlightening for me and much appreciated.

I was told that I couldn’t have been raped. There’s no such thing as rape he said….
His reasoning?
Apparently “A woman with her skirt pulled up can run faster than a man with his trousers doen round his ankles!and this was from my then partner

Looks like this is a case of, it’s ok for women to focus on men’s issues, but don’t talk about women’s issues because you are a woman. Part of the reason why some female writers use their initials instead of their name. People need to relax. Who cares If an issue is addressed about men or women or written about men or women? As long as they are fact based and address the issue of the article I don’t care. Though men have a better idea on men’s issues the same as women for women’s issues. I don’t think slander and nasty language is necessary in any comment

That is exactly what I was trying to say in my previous comment, I think you articulated it a bit better. Does it matter that women write about women, men write about men, women write about men, men write about women? I also don’t mind debate surrounding these issues, they are important, but when a person belittles another person based on his/her opinion (and that’s all it is – an opinion); instead of trying to understand their point of view, they completely lose me. Thank you for your comment, I completely agree.

“Have you EVER in your life seen women kicking off that Movember is sexist?”
Because Movember was in response to Breast Cancer Awareness Month, which still generates more profit despite breast cancer being relatively tamer than prostate cancer.

“This is the strongest symptom of a patriarchal society […]”
Even when you talk about how men are generally more likely to commit suicide than women, it’s coded as a male problem intrinsically brought about by male machinations. Maybe the reasons you don’t get the same ‘whataboutery’ for men’s issues is because even when you talk about them you use it as a way to attack maleness. Want some whataboutery? How about we talk about toxic femininity as well as toxic masculinity? How men’s problems can’t all be blamed on the “””patriarchy””” and that women too are free agents who by their own actions have caused issue for both sexes?

“We need to get to a point where we can talk about women’s issues and get the same level of respect we get when we talk about men’s issues.” Please, women’s issues are historically taken more seriously than men’s. I’ve been told by my health teacher that men couldn’t get raped. That a man even has an erection he was “asking for it”. Men had to create a gimmick like movember to get anyone to even talk about prostate cancer, while millions of funds go into breast cancer research.

Yes some “whataboutry” can be bad faith arguments meant to attack you, to derail, but plenty are meant to call the hypocrisy that some many people have seen when we talk about these issues. How again, even when men suffer, it’s because of the male “patriarchy”.

Your point about Movember also has nothing to do with the article. She is referring to women’s responses to Movember, which are largely in support. And not saying ‘What about women?’ She is not making any claims about how much money should be going into breast cancer research. I also don’t know how you think breast cancer is “tamer than prostate cancer” when the survival rate is lower.

Women are absolutely free agents in many countries, and often perpetuate the patriarchy alongside men. There are plenty of sexist women, racist women, etc. etc. The idea of toxic masculinity isn’t trying to tear men down, it is a version of masculinity that is dangerous. It is great to be masculine! It’s great to be feminine! But toxic masculinity says it’s bad to be feminine if you’re a boy, and bad to be masculine if you’re a girl.

I’m really sorry to hear that your teacher told you that men couldn’t be raped. I don’t think any feminists would agree with that. Of course they can. But aside from your anecdotal evidence, I would be interested in some statistics that supported your idea that “women’s issues are historically taken more seriously than men’s”.

I think it’s great to call things out, but I would like to call you out for doing exactly what the author has said is damaging. You are trying to make it about men again – can you see that?

Jessica, brilliant comment, as a man totally agree! I hope I don’t fit your description! There needs to be so much more done to help women and violence against them.
Please try to ignore these ignorant men, I know you are fighting a massive misogynistic society. Very best wishes to you and all your work!

Great article. I think part of the issue here is that because men don’t talk, that the mass of research, support networks, and help available is less well known. If the male oriented support systems were more widely known then you wouldn’t get the ‘what about’ because people would instantly recognize that there is an equivalent female to male support system/group/network out there. When all people see are female centric solutions then you will always get this reaction. It is incumbent on the male oriented groups to put themselves out there and redress the balance of perception.

I suspect this may have something to do with men using the women in their lives as free emotional labor/therapists and predominantly running into problems when they aren’t able to do so. Basically boys and men are socialized early on to view girls and women as their personal therapists and when those women do not exist in their life, they genuinely do not know what to do.

Everyone will automatically jump into their point of view on a topic but they should remember to reserve that and keep on point of the topic at hand. Redherrings, segways and counter arguements should be bluntly and swiftly addressed not ignored as this will breed further disinformation that is counter intuitive. Thank you for putting in the time and the passion for a group of people who need a voice to change the unpleasent statastic that gets lip service with a wash of the what about bs

I haven’t read Eaton’s academic work, but including control groups of non-women in studies of phenomena which can affect all humans (e.g. victim blaming) would be absolutely standard and might well be interesting. For all I know, she has done that but not mentioned it in the piece.

I have seen this so many times and it has a lot of parallels with the hatred directed at female figures like Greta Thunberg too. I have an idea of the various societal and psychological factors that create the environment for this to happen, but couldn’t begin to unravel it enough to suggest ways of stopping it and even if I did, nobody with any authority would be interested. That word authority, is probably the key. If you look at the make up of authority or establishment, it’s probably overwhelmingly male dominated and by people of a certain age range. Great piece, thank you for posting.

Sorry that you have had to deal with this. I really enjoyed this article. You coming from a place where you see the juxtaposition of how you are treated as a champion of vulnerable males vs. females… interesting insights.

Bettina Arndt is not pro-men, she is anti-women. I didn’t have a problem with her until she championed a pedophile and started claiming that women are making up rape stories on university campuses. That’s when everyone I know criticized her. She’s extremely biased, unprofessional and hasn’t had any up-to-date education since the 1980s.
A real professional person, like the author here, who is doing research about men does not get ‘what about women’ comments.

I suspect a large cause of more whataboutery toward women’s issues compared to men’s issues is each issue’s innate commentary on the genders.

Male homelessness and male health issues make no commentary on women. As such, it would be much easier to listen to or read those with uncompromised compassion.

Articles about victim blaming in women, however, innately involve and make commentary on men. This is true of many women’s issues which, even if not directly involving men, are also often discussed in a way that contextualises them as resulting from male oriented causes (patriarchy, male privilege, masculinity etc).

These articles, therefore, will naturally be much harder to read with uncompromised compassion – seeing as the reader’s gender is being entwined in and as the problem.

Is the above something that you’ve considered?
Because from the experience you’ve outlined, I’m not sure I can agree that the imbalance you’re seeing has the meaning you’ve attributed it.

In comparing with Movember’s lack of whataboutery, do you know if the Breast Cancer Foundation receives much whataboutery?

For articles regarding male homelessness and male health issues would there not still be some element of victim blaming? While I’m sure there are some potential cultural confounds, many people tend to blame the individual for their homelessness and their health issues (e.g., just world belief).

Before retiring, I taught a high school level course called Social Justice 12. Two of the units had to do with women’s and LGBTQ issues. One year, I had a group of boys in the class who continually questioned why it was necessary to spend any time on the topics. Finally, one day, out of frustration, I had the students take out a piece of paper. At the top of the page I had them write trans-male, trans-female, cis-female, cis-male, however they identified but with absolutely no names or other identifying marks. I then made a series of statements to which they would assign a number from 1-5; 1 being completely untrue and 5 being completely true. The statements were things like ‘I can walk around downtown at night and not be afraid’; ‘I never worry about being sexually assaulted’; ‘I never worry about physical assault at the hands of someone of a different gender’. I collected all the papers and tabulated all the results on the board. Under the column ‘cis-male’ the numbers were all 4 & 5. Under every other column, the numbers were all 1s with a smattering of 2s. There was dead silence in the room when I finished. There was never another complaint in that class about studying women’s and LGBTQ issues and the following year I got an email from one of those young cis-men. He had graduated from high school intending on studying culinary arts, but he had changed his mind and was now studying criminology because he wanted to work to stop the trafficking of women. He talked about that particular lesson and how it had opened his eyes. Pretty damn good for a lesson I had pulled out of my ass. This article and the research you do is so important because there are men out there who will pay attention but may never say anything. Thank you for that. It gives me hope.

A point that is right can still be made discriminatorily one-sidedly.
You showed well your point’s factual rightness. But the way you describe doing it has a one-sided bias, as you don’t mention putting any points at all to that class referring to the injustices of conformist masculinity in men’s lives.
Did you ask that class how free the 4 social groups felt, to wear body decorations like beads + bracelets, nail paint, eye shadow, lipstick, or wear skirts or high heels? Or to carry a particular type of fastenable small personal bag? Do they feel free everywhere, to make wholly their own social choices, and to choose a soft caring non-laddish character, without fear of an irrational accusation of homosexuality, and bullying dangers with it? And to share vulnerable emotons socially, do they expect a caring response or do they feel intimidated to look strong + manned up?
Remembering that not all men who strongly dislike cultural masculinity can take either the body disruption or the social niche disruption of becoming trans-women.
Is anyone poised to call this post whataboutery? These things very rarely get challenged or mentioned, and usually only in trans-women’s stories. Society’s threats to women being wider apppreciated + talked about among politically thinking folks, no whataboutery for them arises in reply to the rarer writings about masculinity as oppression.

Agreed that men seem to not have the social ease in expressing themselves and this saddens me. I am a dance teacher and it breaks my heart seeing how male dancers are held up as not being masculine (when in fact the strength and masculinity required to dance well is incredible). I know several men who love to wear makeup and it doesn’t bother me at all. So yes, I wish that all men whether straight or gay or bi could have the freedom to express themselves.
However, Diane was demonstrating a technique to do with a class about women’s and LGBTQ issues. She was relating how she got her male to students to understand why the class was important for them.
I am sure that if she was conducting a class about men’s issues and had complaints from the female members of class she probably could have done a similar survey relating to the topics you pointed about.
So yes, your comment was “whataboutery”. Indeed.

Did you ask that class how free the 4 social groups felt, to wear body decorations like beads + bracelets, nail paint, eye shadow, lipstick, or wear skirts or high heels?

I think that too would be a useful exercise, but a different exercise. Trying to make too many points at once becomes confusing and unclear, especially in the context of an impromptu classroom lesson. There’s only so much you can reasonably fit into one class.

Women: men need to open up and show their feelings.
Men: okay, a lot of our problems are to do with your behaviour. And society doesn’t care when it happens to us.
Women: oh stop whining, grow up.
Your problem is you don’t know how to communicate.
Men: WTF? ???

The Western world cares all about women and doesn’t care one fuck about men in general.

Prostate cancer kills roughly the same amount of people as breast cancer. Know what we get when we mention it?
“Well that’s a male problem, if you are concerned, then YOU do something about it”
(yes, not all of you do this, just MOST)

Now imagine a man:
“Breast cancer? That’s a woman’s issue. Why is it my problem?Why don’t you address it?” Said that one guy we ALL know is a tool.

BTW comparing women’s words to their actions is completely valid, before you say the magic word: whataboutery…

Power is essentially material in nature. Historically, material power was all about survival: food, water, shelter, security etc.
The abuse of power is when someone with a form of power uses it to negatively affect another person, whether consciously or unconsciously.
Historically, power was closely related to force – literally physical force. This form of power over material goods and services implied biological advantages for men. Over time, as humans produced surpluses, power became embodied in other forms; knowledge/education, laws and “civilised” force in the form of policing, military etc. Civil law nowadays is essentially about protecting the power of property and powerful people to continue exploitation – the rich taking from the poor – criminal law is about preventing the poor from taking it back.
Most of these historical power forms were dominated by certain men – globally over time a very small proportion of men. They imposed force-backed systems such as feudalism, hierarchical tribalism and ultimately crude accumulation such as colonialism and then so-called liberal capitalist accumulation.
Sustained by inheritance laws the majority of material power became vested in a small elite of mostly men, and it still is. This is the core reality of humans abusing humans.
Supportive to these essential material power dynamics humanity developed socio-cultural forms that generally gave justification for this inequality and abuse of power. Many formal religions actually challenged this power but overall the more earthly religious structures won out (consider what happened to liberation theology in Latin America for example). Concerning essential social relations, in particular procreation and inheritance, women’s and men’s roles were also determined in such a way that men tended to have more material power. Male-dominated inheritance and ownership of assets was particularly important even though many family forms were actually designed to protect women and children.
Nowadays, the irritation that many men feel when reading feminist writing on women’s issues is, in my opinion, rooted in the failure to see that abusive systems of power may be headed mainly by men, but they actually abuse most other men, most women and almost all children. Abuse follows paths of pre-existing or essential power imbalances. It takes many forms, one of which is the abuse of women because of primal physical differences (being smaller and being more vulnerable during pregnancy and early child-rearing). Over time marginal differences can grow – for example, women are smaller and men’s bodies are formed with better fighting capacity, but women have also being culturally conditioned not to develop physical fighting capacities.
There is no doubt that simply being female is one of the most significant basic reasons for being abused and this has accumulated and been internalised by socio-cultural concepts over time. But this is also true and more generally true for almost all men and children. Why do the majority of UK voters (as much women as men) vote for the Conservatives, or why do Americans have a sexist, racist, narcissist, billionaire (?) for president?
The battleground for material power shifted in the late 1900’s from direct action such as explicit left-right politics, war and trades unionism to the battleground of the mind. And we who believe in ending power abuses and using human capacities for good, are losing.
In this context the idea of some feminists that there should be more equal gender balance in powerful positions in politics and business, even an end to the so-called gender pay gap, is like playing with deck chairs on a cruise ship – not one that’s going to hit an ice-berg but one that will travel on with all its luxury wastefulness and inequality. Women politicians and CEOs have proven themselves to be equally exploitative and abusive of less powerful people.
Even in the area of formal child abuse, women actually do more of it than men – yes, males do over 90% of child sexual abuse, but women do the majority of other forms. And yes, one can counter this by noting that women have a lot more contact with children by dint of doing most of the caring, but this sort of debate is profoundly missing the point. And the point is this: due to historical and sustained abuses of material power, mostly manifested in men, we have created a world where parents are not well enough and resourced enough to do well by their children. The result includes the amazingly self-defeating primary role of women in continuing the cycle of abuse. Parents and socio-cultural and “civilised” power systems such as formal education, through socio-cultural and internalised psychological mechanisms reproduce mentalities willing to accept phenomenal material inequality, “justified” abuses, and continued human conditioning that does not address why people abuse other people. Of put more positvely – how humans can live well with each other.
Humanity is well past the point of production of material goods and development of knowledge and technology to look after all 7.8 billion of us. Yet we continue to increase wealth and income disparity in frenzied consumerism that destroys our ultimate material base, the planet. We do this while continuing to justify mind-boggling abuses of other people who start off from a less powerful position.
The worst and in some ways saddest aspect of this dynamic is that people who experience being abused end up passing it on to anyone in their sphere who is less powerful. Thus we have day to day sexism/misogyny, and above all abuses of the always most vulnerable people – children.
Breaking these patterns for women is important, indeed critical. This is for me the great strength in feminism and why I love to see my daughters becoming such strong good people. But so much of the discourse in the countries with open discourse, is simply missing the point. The ultimate cause of sexism and misogyny is driven by these material power dynamics not some sort of vague idea that men fundamentally think (and act when they can) abusively regarding women. i love women, my wife, daughters friends and I would not countenance abuse. I think this is the actual default position of all men.
So much feminism suffers from this fundamental weakness. It manifests as thoughtless, even disrespectful comments about “men”, which many men take offence at and thus it kicks off anger-laden discourse including crude “whataboutery”. Whataboutery is generally an emotional reaction by ordinary men that also lacks the same insight into power dynamics, but comes from a gut sense of being blamed while feeling abused and actually being abused by real power.
Reducing the issues of sexism/misogyny to a battle between ordinary men and women actually serves the dominant power structures by distracting attention, and worse, by producing a cohort of women willing to become active agents in this power game. It’s strikingly noticeable that the 1-percenters are quite happy to support apparent feminism, equality of sexuality etc. because this whole debate diverts attention from the real core of people abusing people through the essential dynamics of our exploitative economic and power systems.

I believe the whataboutery is caused by men’s general sense that women’s awareness and social recognition by society of important women’s issues are light years ahead of men and their sense of a recognition of valid men’s complaints in the general society. If so, then it follows that men need to further their own research into healing trauma and self-actualizing their own personal growth movements. We all have to do our own work here and mistakes or temper flare ups will happen. Room can be allocated for occasional misbehaving I think, on all sides- because it will happen.

For the last 5 or so years, there has been increased awareness of violence against women which is great (Awareness > Action), and long overdue. Sadly, in societies awkward march forward walking on top of a fence between trying to raise awareness – And not offend any minorities in the process the message that mainstream media publishes has become kind of:

Men, white men, bash women, that is what domestic violence is.

– and this comes from a position of – a white man – who has never and would never dream of hurting a woman, in fact I go out of my way to be the opposite, to lift up, encourage and protect everyone in my circle regardless of gender, or feelings on avacado.

Anyone who has worked with the police will tell you that domestic violence is highly concentrated in certain ethnic groups, is rife in the LGBT+ community, that per capita – white males are some of the least likely to be perpetrators of any demographic and so, after years of every DV poster having basically a photo of me on it, people are getting shitty with the representation of the problem.

So far as the point about nobody being upset about Movember – because it’s for men, men have basically one thing, Movemeber. More men die of prostate cancer than women of breast cancer yet breast cancer gets far more funding, not a week goes by that there isn’t a breast cancer or DV fundraiser – and again – that’s great, but the “Whataboutery” is a backlash to men feeling ignored when 95% of the attention is on womens issues. Sporting scandal round 2 was about a 150 Million dollar fund dished out to “Promote womens involvement in sport” with zero checks and balances…

As I said, as society awkwardly wobbles forward in redressing the gender imbalances, the pendulum is going to inevitably going to swing too far towards one side over another, the whataboutery is the alarm sounding of hey, we know as a society there is a problem, we are all working towards a better world (except our dickhead PM but this is one of his many failures) but lets make a better world for everyone.

Final thought, to Jessica, I believe you should be free to do your PHD on whatever the fuck you want to without fear of criticism, violence against women – women on men violence in the Islamic community if you wish to, it’s a scientific paper which means it’s not a commentary on society as a whole it’s a scientific study on 1 slice of a topic. People are assholes, in that example of whataboutety it just shows people are exceptionally ignorant in 2020 and throw their bias, insecurity and hate through the internet before bothering to read or understand the topic at hand, letting their prejudice decide the entire content of an article by the headline.

I see the point you are making but I think perhaps it is difficult to see this issue through a male lens, as it is impossible for me to see it through yours, though I try to.

Paul, the majority perpetrators of sexual and domestic violence crimes in the UK are lone white British males and have been for a very long time.
Whilst I appreciate your comment here, you are incorrect about the ethnicity of offenders. White men are overwhelmingly perpetrating these crimes. In sex offences, white British men make up 87-90% of all perps. In DV cases I think the last stats were about 70%

Jessica and Paul. This is exactly the type of narrow thinking that brings us down an unsatisfactory road of tit for tat, while ignoring the elephant in the room. Yes it is correct that males commit over 90% of sexual violence and in adult v adult DV too they commit the majority. White men are rougly proportionate to their overall population proportion. But here’s a tat: women commit the substantial majority of physical, emotional and abuse by neglect of children, and women commit an extraordinary amount of abuses of other women too. There is no good in comparing men and women as perpetrators, generally with a judgemental undertone. There is no way forward if people start with the reductionist and essentially incorrect believe that there is something innate in men that causes them to think and commit sexist/myogynistic deeds. ~If there isn’t something innate in men or women then where does it come from? The ultimate cause of all abusive behaviour lies in historical material dynamics evolving with socio-cultural conditioning over time. We cannot develop a less abusive and more humane society if we do no address the fundamental inequality of wealth.

In my earlier post I outlined my understanding of why women are the main perpetrators of abuse of children. I specifically said that women do far more child-care And in doing so I am not blaming anyone.
Look at the way you responded to me and you will see why you tend to get angry reactions including whataboutery. Firstly, you didn’t read my posts. Then you use the term “men don’t play an equal role in parenting” in an obviously condemnatory tone. And you end with a statement that is wrong.
My area of professional expertise in is child sexual abuse: the facts are clear; about 90% of acts of CSA by adults are done by males. The proportion of physical abuse that comes to light is around 60% done by women. Psychological abuse of children is about 60-90% by women and abuse by neglect around 80-90%. These data have two big qualifiers: firstly all of them represent a small proporation of what actually happens and secondly, they are mostly based on incidents that come to the attention of CPS or the police who work in very different ways in different countries and even regions. Both these factors make the data weak, but there is general agreement in the relevant professions that my overall assertions are accurate.
This is in no way to blame anybody. Creating tension between men and women around how humans abuse each other is fruitless and diverting. Unfortunately, women who write about these issues also fail to realise how angry, judgemental and blaming their tone and words are, thus bringing debate down blind alleys and often away from the truth of causalitty and thus strategic action.

I thought the initial article was supposed to hinge more on claims about demography of victims than on demography of perps. But it’s not hard for me to see what you’re doing here. I am familiar with arguments similar to the implicit argument that male victimhood of domestic violence is less important than female victimhood of domestic violence simply because a majority of convicted perps are male. It is structurally similar to the argument that black victimhood of gang violence in the US is less important that white victimhood of gang violence in the US simply because a majority of convicted perps are black. (BEGIN SARCASM) Perhaps when you have finished saturating the market in the UK for all-female facilities for victims of domestic violence, you can extend your product line by going to the US and opening a series of facilities to protect only white people from gang violence. Of course, then you might have to write a paraphrase of your article here called “Stop Asking Me ‘What About Black People'”. And, in the comment section, you can just put black people in their place by calling them racists. (END SARCASM)

Perhaps so many men ask “what about men” because they are sick to the core of being patronised by feminism with it’s pervasive dangerous lies like the ones perpetuated in this very article.

How bloody dare you insinuate the primary reason young men kill themselves is because of “suppressed emotions”. 4/5 men who do take their own lives DID open up about their emotions to loved ones. As someone who has struggled with depression my whole life, I can absolutely confirm talking about depression does not even smooth it a little.. In fact it makes it considerably worse, as now everyone knows you’re just a depressed mess you can’t manage their own life, you’re totally invisible to women, HA good luck trying to find a girl who will date a depressed man (doesn’t happen).

For someone who helps men’s mental health for a living I am gobsmacked at your ignorance of The causes of men’s mental health.

So what you’re saying, Katie, is “not all women”? You know that’s not a helpful response when men do it, and it’s not a helpful response here either. Of course not all women fail to support partners with depression. And not all men participate in patriarchal abuse of women either. We’ll take that as a given, and any responses that say things like that are just annoying noise.

I’m gay myself, but I’ve seen many many many straight men describing a disturbing pattern of behaviour from their partners. The wife/girlfriend complains that the man doesn’t talk about their emotions, but as soon as he does begin to open up, she immediately dismisses and even mocks any concerns he’s raised, anything that’s disturbing him, and also begins to see him as less desirable.

This is also patriarchal norms at work, of course. Women can be, and often are, complicit in enforcing them. The patriarchy does not benefit most men, and men as a class are not really to blame for enforcing patriarchal standards any more than women as a class are. The patriarchy benefits healthy, middle-aged, powerful (which in our society means wealthy) men. Even they aren’t really setting its standards as a conscious decision and deliberate plot. The patriarchy is an emergent property of our society.

Why should men talk about their feelings when, at best, their feelings don’t even matter? Many men can’t talk to women about their feelings because they have what women say are the wrong feelings; feelings to which they are not entitled according to women’s standards of emotional entitlement. And many men can’t talk to another man about their feelings because they will both end up being accused of emotionally conspiring against women. What would most of them talk about if they could talk? Maybe the endless mixed message that they need to break fewer eggs while also providing the women around them with a bigger omelet. But ASK them. I DARE you. Men’s emotions are broadly suppressed. But not necessarily more by expectations imposed upon them by other men than by the risk of revealing to women and tactically useful emotional weak point. Men do encourage other men not to focus on their feelings. But mostly because men, together, know they need to focus on controlling variables they can actually control in order to prevent or solve problems that can actually be prevented or solved. The bottomless cornucopia of criticism from women that drives men to invent, discover, build, and maintain almost everything in the world is not a variable than can be better managed by focusing on the sunk cost of already having failed to manage it in various ways, either as a group, or individually.

I did not know about you and your fantastic work for and with both Men and Women until my Daughter shared this article and I read it. Read it, increasingly horrified by the abuse that you are sent by insecure Men who react badly to ANYTHING that they perceive as a threat to their dominance.

Having read the article, I find myself in AWE of you and your husband for the work you do in all areas that help vulnerable Human Beings. I also find myself torn between pity and disgust – mainly disgust for the ones who clearly simply want to pour abuse your way but pity for the ones who simply don’t ‘get it’.

This is a very good read. Thank you for pointing this out. It’s so true. Although, I do think there is more to it then simple misogyny. As women are marginalized in society, there is a lot of focus on women’s issues. Rarely do you hear the term men’s issues. Yet, men are the perpetrators of many of the situations that create women’s issues. Rather than treat the symptom, shoot for the cause. We talk about domestic violence and rape as things that happen to women but by who? Perhaps, what we are talking about is human issues 🤷🏻‍♀️.

Honestly, I skipped every other comment made because I agree with you and wanted to say bravo. Not everyone’s comment, concern, study, need or any variation is based on everyone or anyone but the person that is actually doing it. Everyone needs to take a moment, shut up and say the phrase “not everything is about me” then we can start moving forward to understand there’s a large range of issues on every route; sex, race, belief systems or anything involving every single person or specific groups. Again, bravo, I did enjoy this read and thank you for putting it out there.

I’d like to see a study that shows how often women are asked to back up their experiences with facts and articles when talking about them, versus men talking about their experiences. Keyword being experiences.

Wow. I’m just floored at the treatment you’ve received. We all know that the same things that happen to women can happen to men, but why is it that people have to be mean about what you’ve written if it doesn’t include men? I suspect it could be plain ignorance. It’s also much easier to say things over the internet than it is face-to-face.

I’m embarrassed for those women who’ve responded so nastily. I’m glad for women like you who fight for women who can’t seem to fight for themselves. I don’t know how I’d handle all of those negative comments, but I think this response is fabulous! Kudos to you!

Here’s an even simpler solution: stop pretending that you even care what happens to men in terms other than how it stands to affect women, and men will eventually stop asking why you keeping acting like you don’t care. Meanwhile, the dominant cultural narrative, that women are both more likely to be victimized and that their victimization is somehow more important, is a narrative that utterly demands derailment, even from a simple statistical standpoint. Even a lot of women really don’t have any problem understanding this point when they’ve seen enough pertinent data. Either you haven’t seen the data, or you’re pretending you haven’t, or you think it doesn’t matter for some reason. Please pick one of these and explain yourself.

She doesn’t have to explain anything to someone who’s so ignorant as to not even read the article before commenting.
I’m sure your ‘facts’ are from some biased MRA site that’s been proven to be false. Which is why you didn’t share the links.

The author does have to explain.
The person who published the article has the primary burden to defend her position before others have any obligation to disprove what she alleges.

I am trying to engage her.
Meanwhile, you’re trying to shut down discussion by disparaging my character rather than addressing anything I may have to say on the quantity or quality of its possible merits and shortcomings.

I have read the article.
Assuming, for the sake of argument, that her supposed list of anecdotes is not biased by her pre-existing views of gender and gender-relations, it’s nonetheless important to understand that what she describes exists in a larger context which assumes that women in western nations are a statistical special victim group, and that the forms of victimization she describes are essentially gendered as female, with some corresponding number of male victims being more or less some kind of incidental footnote to that.

If this viewpoint does not stand to be reasonably construed or inferred from her text, I am eager to see her explanation of how it is not. If this viewpoint does not stand to be further reasonably construed or inferred as a vital assumption underpinning the text , I am also eager to see her explanation of how it is not.
Meanwhile, the implicit claim upon which the article ultimately seems to rest is scientifically unsupported and, I further assert, scientifically unsupportable.

Ironically, by telling men that corresponding victimization of men is reasonable to hold as a lower social priority, mathematically or otherwise, the author is shaming male victimhood.
In this sense at least, I concede that she is at least some kind of expert on the subject of victim shaming.

I do not identify as MRA and I see the MRA as somewhat dysfunctional.
I do identify as an ex-feminist, but I support feminists when they support equality, which, here the author does not do.

It’s interesting to be criticized for not sharing links, considering that the author shared even less than that to support her implicit claim that women in western nations are a statistical special victim group.
If you do need links, and are willing to engage, perhaps we could start here:
The Department of Psychology California State University, Long Beach is not an MRA site.
If you would like to assert that cited data are cherry-picked, that would be an interesting angle for me;
just show me some other collection of anything like 371,600 data references that shows the opposite.

A person of the author’s professional background could only be described as negligent for not, by now, having seen this link. Moreover, by not bothering to engage with the link content before tacitly or obliquely demanding that you, I, and the rest of the world simply dismiss it, her actions are negligent, even assuming that she would have compelling, persuasive means to get me to dismiss it.

I mean: she could at least try.

But I understand that her goal must not be to persuade me of anything; her goal must be to gain sympathy from women by telling them what they already prefer to believe, regardless of the facts. And if shaming male victims is one of the other results, I can only imagine that’s some kind of “bonus” for her; it convinces (or she may believe it convinces) some number of potential critics to STFU.

So I’m all ears to both of you. Enlighten me, please.

The author does have to explain, and, now, really, so do you, LeeLee.

Meanwhile, if the author wants a theory about why she is hailed for her token interest in the well-being of men, it’s not hard to see some kind of plausible explanatory pattern that will inevitably be dismissed as “mansplaining”, even as I offer it merely as an alternative theory to the author’s own stale conclusion, never explicitly stated, that men are just a bunch of entitled sexists who care more about other men than about women.

My theory, since the article, itself, seems to solicit one, is:

The author is hailed for help to men because it conspicuously stands out against a larger background of society as whole already doing a bunch of stuff to address the victimization of women. There’s absolutely nothing distinctive about a woman helping other women and giving lip service to the idea that what happens to men matters for reasons other than that women can be indirectly affected by it. If she is getting attention for incidentally also doing something that almost no one else is doing, maybe it’s because almost no one else is doing it. Maybe if men, otherwise, tend to act as if they are being left out for no reason, maybe it’s because they’re more often being left out for no reason. This is a viable theory not only for the reason that it is almost as simple as the author’s apparent theory, but also because, unlike the author’s apparent theory, there’s some big data behind it.

Don’t hold your breath for a response from the author. Someone who has made a career of deliberately ignoring half or more than half of a social problem on the mere basis of gender favoritism probably isn’t suddenly going to try to convince you that she somehow doesn’t really even know what she’s doing. Meanwhile, though, please feel free to keep the Wikipedia logical fallacies article on a shortcut tab to use as a checklist in case she ever does respond. You know that I will.

The point is that, because the male half of a non-gendered social problem doesn’t really matter to Dr. Eaton, men need to shut up.

At the top of the page is a cartoon of what looks like a man shushing a woman.

No matter how far you zoom in or out, the graphic “VICTIMFOCUS” seems to be more focused on the man than on the woman. This would be confusing, since the man is apparently not supposed to be the victim, except that, really, we know the article isn’t about victims at all; it’s about how men need to shut up.

And that’s what the article says, in a nutshell; Eaton is not really interested in half or more of a social problem because those victims are male, so she needs men to shut up about that half of the problem.

Granted, if you zoom enough, Eaton’s image, itself, seems to become the focus of “VICTIMFOCUS”, which is at least consistent with the way you’re seeming to try to come to her rescue, rather than to allow her to first defend her own position.

Summary:

Eaton: “Men, stop telling me to shut up; YOU shut up.”

Broyles: “That’s not what we said; no one told you to shut up.”

Chandler: “Eaton, let me handle this. Broyles, Eaton already told you to shut up once. Now I’m also telling you to shut up.”

I think I need to reiterate that I’m an ex-feminist, and I support feminists when they support equality.

What you describe as “missing the point” seems to me to mean “failing to understand things as was possible before no longer identifying as a feminist.”

A preponderance of data offers no support for the idea that there is broad social utility to the tactical segregation of social problems with which Eaton is engaged. The only interest that stands to be served by such segregation is special interest.

Sometimes, just sometimes you have to stop and think! In the original piece jessicapsych points out a simple truth. In all her research into many different areas, if the study was about men then the study was accepted no question, but if the study was about Women then there were MANY comments that were ‘What about the men’! Very simple summary. So what is you argument?

Martin – you do not summarise her point accurately. The problem is not that equal articles about men and women get different responses including whataboutery. Its that the articles about and by women are often provocatively lacking in insight regarding men.

Ignore the Haters. Your work is invaluable and women and girls have a world they live in that men just do not understand. As a man, we do not get, we do not feel, we do not understand the day to day feelings, fears, abuse, ridicule etc. I am a man. I only fear one thing. Something happening to someone I care about. I don’t walk a dark street fearing for my safety. I don’t feel a chill when a bunch of loud mouths yell out sexually explicit content when I am exercising. I don’t have to be on my guard where ever I go. Or in my own home. Men don’t seem to understand the statistics of females being abused, or in an abusive relationship. Or being assaulted. Women and girls, live with that fear everyday. It’s always there. I can’t say to my wife “don’t be afraid, I’ll protect you”. Because I am not there 24/7. It’s unrealistic and just an arrogant and ignorant comment to make. It’s up to every single man to make a change. Stop the comments, stop the weird staring. The chauvinistic attitudes, the victim blaming. The fact that women are still considered less than men. It’s just ridiculous. Once we as a society start showing how important and incredibly wonderful women are on our planet, we might actually start to save humanity as a whole. .Thankyou for your wonderful articles Ms Eaton. Your words, and your educational blogs are invaluable.

If you don’t walk a dark street fearing for your safety you are reckless and dangerously physically overconfident. I do, and any rational man does. There is such thing as violent crime towards anyone. I have known a man who was sodomy-raped at a party in his twenties. Not all men have big physical builds to protect their wives with, it’s unrealistic to write as if we have, arrogant to assume men are always stronger than women, and some are abused in their own home. I feel a chill when a bunch of loud mouths yell out explicit accusations of homosexuality at a man who is not conforming to a miserably narrow emotionally repressed standard personality type. We face the typical society of our own gender being emotionally rougher more unempathic and lacking in caring towards us, the day to day feelings, fears, abuse, ridicule etc, not understood by the too many (not all) feminists who treat us all collectively as to blame for that, instead of as its victims as our suicide rate shows.

spectrumfairness, you’re missing the point that society cares less whether men ARE actually unsafe than whether women merely FEEL unsafe, even if, comparatively, they ARE safe. The state of the activism we’re discussing here is not essentially about preventing people from getting hurt; it’s essentially about keeping me and some other man busy trying to decide which one of us is the bogeyman and which one is the guy who is going to save the world from they bogeyman. And if the matter somehow comes to fisticuffs, the data will be used to demonize both of us.

I (verbally) support the author helping people simply in terms of the author helping people, because there is never a wrong reason to do a good thing, if it is really, ultimately, a good thing. What I don’t support is the author capitalizing other people’s victimhood for use in furthering her anti-scientific gender politics.

It is important to talk about, “Violence directed at women,” not merely word it, “violence against woman” — and I swear that is NOT a euphemism, and it is not equivocating. That puts the onus on the patriarchal causes of violence done to women on the basis of their gender, as opposed to random violence. If I care about Anglicans that just happen to be victims of bank robbery shootings more than Methodists, that would call for a “what about,” because being in a bank at that awful moment is not a function of someone’s religion. Violence against women as a category is NOT random without regard to their gender. They are chosen for it based on their gender. So being concerned specifically about VAW is not exclusionary of males. The perpetrators almost always exclude males.

Good point, well put.
However, your example of Anglicans and Methodists can also be used to show that the use of the term whatarboutery is itself problematic and is being used innacurately and provocatively by Jessica.
This is because what is being reacted to is not that Methodists/men are being excluded unfairly from consideration, hence what about Methodists/men? But that Methodists/men, ALL of them, are being blamed for the bank robberies/shootings, with an implied criticism of something fundamental about Methodists/men.
The challenge that will bring us to deeper understanding of human reality is to understand why Anglicans/women and others are vicitimised in bank robberies and all sorts of other crimes/shootings and abuses. The answer to this question is not because there are Methodists/men who abuse power because they are Methodists/men with some sort of innate sexism/mysogyny.
The answer to why people abuse other people lies deeper than just Anglican/Methodist or female/male differences. The differences between men and women give rise to specific forms of abuse, but gender difference is not causal.
See my earlier contribution under “Donnacadh Hurley” for my answer to this deeper question.

Thank you for all your work, Jessica, and for remaining undaunted.
The phenomenon you describe makes me incredibly sad – I think it speaks of a whole class of people who are terrified of their own irrelevance, who fear the negation of their very being if everyone isn’t focused on them all the time. A bit like Hegel’s master/slave dialectic – the master is constituted by the gaze of the slave – if the slave’s looking elsewhere, what becomes of the master? How can we help these people become secure in their sense of their own innate being and value?